I’ve seen a lot of folks online who think they can teach developers how to develop, but I didn’t imagine the problem was so bad in face-to-face interactions.
As spotted by Game*Spark, Tokyo Game Dungeon’s official X account made a statement on May 5 saying that despite the organizers’ efforts to raise awareness about the issue of “preachy dudes” over the past two years, they still haven’t been able to eliminate the problem at their events. According to their definition, “preachy dudes”(jp: sekkyo ojisan) are people of any age and gender who find it acceptable to badger developers with condescending, unsolicited “advice” on their abilities and work.
Am I an unsolicited advice dude? I was at a convention playing an indie demo. The game had an island on a 2D field, with an invisible wall on the left, and a very clear cliffside and water on the right.
I spent a good 5 minutes looking like an idiot trying to figure out where to go, testing the borders, picking up the only item, putting down the only item, before giving up. The dev said to just go into the water. I asked “Why not make that cliff a gradual beach into the water to indicate it’s not a hazard?” and I got a brutal “the game already shipped and I’m not here for feedback” which immediately soured the whole experience. It’s like… why are you here then? Just set up the demo on steam and skip the fan interaction completely.
Devs are, by and large, computer people, and computer people are, by and large, not people people.
Day9 has nice talk about giving good feedback, and commands or commands hidden as rhetorical question are not one of them.
The right feedback would be something like: "Oh, this confused me. I did not expect the cliff edge to be the goal.
Not more, because you don’t know the intended. Maybe the dev wanted you to be confused or you were one of ten people to not go down the cliff.
Describe your experience and your expectations, not a solution to something that might not be a problem.
But see, that’s an almost naive take. A convention is not a professional environment. The social contract isn’t set, so it is two strangers meeting each other for the first time. The dev watched me flail about for five minutes before finally giving me the answer, so if I turn around and state the obvious “I was confused and didn’t realize the water wasn’t hazardous” it could easily be taken as a condescending statement. A belief that I think the dev is so stupid that he can’t figure out why I was having trouble.
So I had just a mere moment to figure out whether the dev understood where the problem was, and break it to him if he didn’t. Hence the question. Not a rhetorical question, mind you… a question hiding my information with a get out of jail free card. We were both there watching me humiliate myself, so how do I say most people are taught not to launch others into water without confirming they can swim, with this dev possibly being thin-skinned and unprofessional?
Ask a question. Why not make the cliff a gradual beach into the water to indicate it’s not a hazard?
The dev could have easily answered with:
I reused the cliff from elsewhere to save memory
or
I wanted to give people a chance to familiarize themselves with the controls before moving on
or even
I didn’t have enough colors
and that would have been the end of the exchange. The information was passed, we both knew I struggled, and now we both know why.
That doesn’t sound like the kind of person the article is referring to.
The condescending preachy people will barely even look at the game and tell the developer what they need to add/change, which are usually things from whatever their favorite genre or AAA game is. Its not real feedback because they aren’t trying to push the game in a better direction (they usually won’t even play what the dev has), they just want someone to hear their grand ideas. The dev has to maintain the demo booth and (usually) has to try and be formal and so the preachy person has them trapped.
Your experience seems like legitimate feedback that the dev wouldn’t hear out, which sucks. Unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of devs that aren’t great at social events and its hard to keep it up for the whole duration of an expo.
There’s definitely a time and a place for playtesting, and “user was confused about which way to go (water looked inaccessible)” would be the kind of note I’d expect them to take out of such a session. If I were the developer and I saw my player struggle like that, I’d be kicking myself for that design.
I think TGD is only trying to say that the show floor isn’t the time or place for playtesting. One would hope that that has already been accomplished by that point.
Maybe that event is different and only for final products? My convention had so many booths, with a wide range between this is the final game; buy it right here all the way to wishlist this for 2028 release. There were a few booths I saw evolve over 3 years. Really neat.
Nah you’re good, I have a feeling there is significant overlap between “unsolicited advice dudes” and chuds who screech about Sweet Baby.
What is Sweet Baby?
Its a narrative consulting company based in Canada that right wing chuds think is ruining games by forcing wokeism into games because Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was a bad game.
Sweet Baby Inc, the company that is usually accused of forcefully making games woke
I mean by definition you are - so start in that situation by asking „are you looking for feedback?“